Saturday, February 24, 2007

The latest Chomsky interview is hopeless, but he inadvertently knocks one out of the park (my emphasis in red):

“We’re supposed to believe that oil had nothing to do with it, that if Iraq were exporting pickles or jelly and the center of world oil production were in the South Pacific that the United States would’ve liberated them anyway. It has nothing to do with the oil, what a crass idea. Anyone with their head screwed on knows that that can’t be true. Allowing an independent and sovereign Iraq could be a nightmare for the United States. It would mean that it would be Shi’ite-dominated, at least if it’s minimally democratic. It would continue to improve relations with Iran, just what the United States doesn’t want to see. And beyond that, right across the border in Saudi Arabia where most of Saudi oil is, there happens to be a large Shi’ite population, probably a majority.

Moves toward sovereignty in Iraq stimulate pressures first for human rights among the bitterly repressed Shi’ite population but also toward some degree of autonomy. You can imagine a kind of a loose Shi’ite alliance in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Iran, controlling most of the world’s oil and independent of the United States.”

Chomsky presents this Shi’ite alliance as the ultimate nightmare for the American Establishment, but it is in fact the final stage of Wurmser’s Zionist Plan for the Middle East. After decades of supporting Saddam’s Sunni government as the sole bulwark against Shi’ite dominance of Middle East oil, why the hell would the American Establishment suddenly decide to remove Saddam and let the Shi’ites control everything? On the other hand, this is the ultimate Zionist goal, to remove the ‘oil weapon’ from the Sunnis and put it in the hands of moderate Shi’ites. The plan, which continues despite a few temporary Lobby problems in the United States, is to put Saudi, Iranian and Iraqi oil fields in the hands of Shi’ites, who will form a covert alliance with Israel and thus remove the oil weapon from those who might want to curtail Zionist imperialism.

Let me invent a new term: azionist. Azionist analysis is the study of the Middle East without considering the role of Zionism or Israel, and Chomsky is its champion. People are finding it increasingly difficult to argue that the attack on Iraq was about getting Iraqi oil, given that the upshot of the attack was essentially to destroy Iraqi oil production capability (the oil companies knew this would happen, which is why they were against the attack, and draft Iraqi laws don’t prove anything unless: a) there is oil to pump, and b) the draft law is passed, which it won’t be). Similarly, nuking Iran isn’t going to help Iranian oil production (though Chomsky’s latest conspiracy theory is that the plan will be to turn the Iranian oil fields over to local Arabs). The shift from getting oil to controlling oil is supposed to explain everything, including how the Establishment will benefit from the various Zionist schemes, but it remains to be seen how removing much of the world’s oil production is supposed to benefit the people who make their trillions from selling oil and the things made from oil. It’s odd that the only spokesmen against attacking Iran are the representatives of the very Establishment which is supposed, on azionist analysis, to be behind everything, including the supposed upcoming attack on Iran.

Analysts are (slowly) coming around to the view that Iran isn’t going to be attacked, at least not by the Americans, but are having grave troubles justifying their new world view given their doctrinaire adherence to azionism. Since they couldn’t mention Israel in the build-up to war, they can’t mention Israel as war becomes unlikely.

It is becoming increasingly obvious that everybody, both left and right, is in thrall to the analysis of the waxy guy in the glass box, V. I. Lenin. Lenin’s wholesale analysis appeals to academics, as it appears to give structure, and thus intellectual legitimacy, to what is after all just an educated guess. I’m sticking with my conspiracy analysis that everything the Bush Administration does can be explained on three grounds, not necessarily in order of importance:

political power, and its retention;

money (this is the necessary, and sufficient, explanation for Cheney’s involvement; whatever happened to those Halliburton options, anyway?); and